Spiritual Warfare 5: Weapons Training: Truth

Once again, the immediate goal is to stand firm in the spiritual battle.

GOD’S ARMOR COMPONENT:
TRUTH represented by a belt.
The belt holds the Roman soldier’s fighting garment in place so that he can fight well without the inner garment (and thereby the subsequent layers) shifting out of place and the soldier can keep a proper stance, making him ready for action. This is the first thing that a Roman soldier puts on. This is the visual Paul used to illustrate the very basic importance of first having the Truth. This first component in place keeps the soldier from getting disoriented, distracted, and discomposed during mission from shifting that occurs in its absence.

Truth: God’s Word is truth.
John 17:17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.

John 8:31 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

When we say “This is the Word of the Lord”, that’s because the Bible is (2 Tim 3:16-17). God is a Truth-teller. Even mature Bible teachers would say that they consider the Bible the authority such that if at any time what they are saying is in contradiction to the Word of God (through an unintentional mistake), the latter will prevail.

If God is a truth-teller and His Word is Truth and He is telling us who He is, what He wants, how to do things, how can we disregard what He is saying? Paul tells us in 2Cor 10:3-5 3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

NLT translation says: 4 We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments.

MSG translation says:4 We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God

Contradicting God’s Word (the enemy’s strategy since Genesis 3), contradicting who He says He is, contradicting what He says He wants or doesn’t want, presupposing that we know better than God, these are the barriers against God’s Word/Truth.

“The strongholds of arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, of human reasoning and false arguments, of warped philosophies, of barriers against the truth of God” are the very thing that the God-given weapons are meant to demolish. That is because these falsities and deceptions opposed to God’s truth and wisdom are set up by the enemy, Satan.

We need to equip ourselves with God’s Truth. It is the only way that we can protect ourselves from the enemy’s deception. The often cited example for detecting a counterfeit is with paper money. Counterfeiters hardly bother to make fake coins or fake twenty peso bills because the stakes are low. The greater your use to God, the more the enemy will want to deceive you. The counterfeiter will make the counterfeit high-denomination bills as extremely close to the genuine article as possible in color, size, shape, material, watermark, and other properties. People who had not studied the genuine article are the ones susceptible to accepting the counterfeit bill. That’s why the counterfeit bills have the capability of deceiving people… they are meant to look exactly like the original. When the enemy plants untruth to turn us away from God’s Truth, it will not be a farfetched idea that is easily detected as deception. Instead, it will resemble God’s Truth with just the right twist of untruth to make it not Truth. It takes the least amount of untruth to make Truth into untruth.

Deuteronomy 13 tells us that even if there is a sign or wonder from a prophet who can foretell dreams (v1), but if whatever this is leads us AWAY FROM God (v2), then we must not listen to it (v3). God commands us to follow HIM and hold fast to Him (v4). That prophet who drives people away from God should be put to death for inciting rebellion against the Lord(v5). We are commanded to “inquire, probe, and investigate thoroughly” (v14) what we are given because God is a jealous God who will not give His glory to another, He said so Himself. Anything that draws the glory to anyone or anything other than Himself, that is not from God.

There are two sources of power that create miraculous signs and wonders. God is the greatest power of all. The power from God gives glory to God. If the glory goes to something or someone else, it is not from God. In Exodus 7:10-12, Pharaoh’s officials and sorcerers duplicated the “miraculous sign” that God-anointed Aaron performed. Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs showing God’s superior power. But if one is not aware, one could get impressed by signs and fall into the deceptive scheme of the enemy. This is a caution for us not to get carried away when we see amazing signs. The litmus test is if the glory goes to God.

Ex 7:10 So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. 11 Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts: 12 Each one threw down his staff and it became a snake. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs.

In God’s Truth, we need to study the Word of God so that we can discern if what we are given is thus aligned, or if it is a deception.

It is interesting to note that Paul wrote the caution against deception to the Corinthians, described in 1Cor 1:2 as “2 To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours. These are God’s people, believers. Yet, no one is immune from deception. Everyone has to see for themselves what God’s Word says in order to stand firm in God’s truth. Complacency, self-pride in one’s own wisdom, and presumptions all work against our knowing God’s Truth. We all need to humble ourselves and hold captive every thought to Christ. Easy to say than do. We need to remind ourselves intentionally to do this.

Lord, please open our eyes to Your truth. Give us Your Holy Spirit so we can understand You with the mind of Christ to discern truth and align ourselves with You. You will be the One to give us victory in this battle in Your name and for Your glory Amen.

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Published by Karen E. Young

Sharing the journey of fumbling my way to pleasing Jesus as His follower, as a wife, mother, businesswoman/ entrepreneur, cook/baker, employer, writer, occasional singer, lifelong learner, and aspiring dancer.
View all posts by Karen E. Young